


You Feel Born Out of Time: A Brief Interlude

by silver_penny



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Ficlet, Gen, I mercilessly mock Dean's weird music choices, Record Shops, cassette tapes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-19
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-16 01:46:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29568408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silver_penny/pseuds/silver_penny
Summary: In between long stretches of highway, Dean and Sam poke their heads into diners, gas stations…and record shops. Turns out living on the road can leave you behind the times.The girl boots herself up onto her tiptoes and snatches it out of the air. “What – is this acassette tape, oh my gosh.”“Seriously?” says Red Jacket. “What do you even do with those things?”
Relationships: Dean Winchester & Music
Kudos: 3





	You Feel Born Out of Time: A Brief Interlude

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Ginger" by David Devant & His Spirit Wife, which I had on loop last night. To paraphrase Neil Gaiman, silly stories deserve pretentious titles.

The record shop is the true definition of a hole-in-the-wall: there had been a half-staircase straight down to reach the entrance, and inside is a dense network of tall shelves and cardboard boxes, with black felt laid along the inner walls and a paper-mâché of concert posters layered floor to ceiling on their left. The electric lights overhead buzz loudly and flicker intermittently, dim enough to hide years’ worth of dust accumulated in hidden corners and aeons of sodas and hoagies spilled over the floor. Dean falls in love immediately. He starts dodging the shop’s few and scattered patrons while he navigates by year and by genre, back towards the classics. He vaguely registers Sam wandering off towards another corner and starts digging methodically down from AC/DC.

“Hey, look at this!”

The call comes from some half-pint teenybopper in a red jacket a few feet away. He’s leaning over a dusty cloth-and-wire bucket, elbows-deep in old jewel cases and cardboard folders. When Dean glances over, the kid is holding up a cassette case, yellowed on the edges, with an indecipherable black-and-white J-card. His call summons a gaggle of other kids, decked out in squishy jackets and neon-bright hats, who emerge from the darkened aisles like termites out of the woodwork.

“Ohh-ho-ho,” crows one in a yellow hat with a green jacket. “Throwback!”

The girl who’s swarmed up next to him boots herself up onto her tiptoes and snatches the tape out of the air. “What – is this a _cassette tape_ , oh my gosh.” Red Jacket don’t seem upset by the theft; he leans forward into her space as she fiddles with the case. It becomes clear after several fruitless seconds that she doesn’t know how to open it; Dean has to close his eyes. Eventually Yellow Hat grabs it from her, and the side slips open as he does. A general cheer arises from their little huddle, and Red Jacket peels it out and holds it up to the light, bringing them full circle. 

Dean shifts slightly, shuffling around the tapes in front of him and trying not to be the creep staring at kids in a music store. Which, well, he kind of is – but not like _that_. It’s just that – really? What did they even teach kids these days in their little jailhouses? Not how to color-coordinate, that’s for freaking sure.

To his left, Yellow Hat is squinting at the J-card, sounding out a mess of letters. “W…” he reads out. “And I think this is…I think it’s an O?” The girl next to him reaches over and flips it around. 

“I think that’s an M,” she says confidently.

“Oh, yeah,” Yellow Hat says. “Hey, thanks. So that’s an M…U? Something-something O, and some more M’s, it looks like.” The stare solemnly at it for a long moment, until Red Jacket stops peering at the labels on his cassette tape and instead elects to stick his pinky finger into one of the spools. Yellow Hat snickers. They watch him wind the tape back to the supply reel. After the take-up is empty, Red Jacket tilts his head to the side and starts turning it the other way, the tape pushing up visibly against the plastic case. Dean takes a deep breath. Dean is not going to snap at teenagers in a record store.

“Y’know,” the girl says. “A few years ago, when I was cleaning out my grandad’s attic with my mom, we found a whole box of these little dudes.”

“Nah, seriously?” says Red Jacket. “Man, what do you even do with these things?”

She shrugs. “Nothing. There’s nowhere to play ‘em, and it’s nothing you can’t find online.”

“The car,” Dean says, and only realizes he’s said that aloud when they all turn to look blankly over at him. “You can, you know, you can play them –“ he pokes at the air with a cassette tape, miming sliding it into the player, “-in the car.”

They stare. The silence stretches out like a saltwater taffy. Eventually, Yellow Hat clears his throat and says, “What kinda car are you driving, anyway?”

“You could play these things in cars?” Red Jacket asks. “Why?”

“Why do you think, idiot?” the girl asks, and just like that they’re back to prodding each other with the mutilated tape again.

Yeah, that’s it. Dean pushes off from the counter and ignores the weary cracking noise from behind him. They’re getting out of here.

“Sam,” he hisses, ducking around shelves and glancing into dark corners. This place is _not that big_ , where on Earth – “Sam! There you are, c’mon, we’re getting – _what_ are you doing?”

Sam looks like someone has caught him with his hand in the cookie jar. He’s got his laptop open, and a stack of marked-up indie discs stacked behind it. “Uh,” he says.

“Yeah, no. Never mind that, c’mon. We’re getting out of here.” Dean spins and marches towards the door, just barely remembering to drop a handful of dollar bills onto the empty countertop. He can hear Sam scrambling after him.

The sunlight outside is an assault on the senses after the dim of the shop, but it’s the good kind of assault, the kind that means you’re alive. He swings into Baby’s front seat and waits for Sam to close the passenger-side door before tearing off down the street. He fishes a case out from his jacket pocket, flips it open against his leg, and slides a cassette into the player. It clicks into place; Dean turns up the music.

**Author's Note:**

> This ended up being a little fragment of a larger idea about Dean and Sam and music, but that story is going to take me a few months to finish, so I thought I'd post this in the meantime.
> 
> The tape is absolutely a rip of an old Mucous Membrane show.


End file.
